Everything You Need to Know If You Are Planning to Open a Restaurant During the Pandemic

Everyone in the catering and hospitality industry knows that successfully opening a restaurant, and keeping it open, is something of a calculated risk. Trying to do so during, and in the aftermath of, the coronavirus pandemic is nothing short of a massive gamble.

Luckily restaurateurs tend to be a brave bunch, and as such, their efforts to open new ventures in the current climate will undoubtedly continue unabated, but what can they do to ease the odds in their favor?

When it comes to planning your budget for opening a restaurant, there will always be obstacles that will appear out of nowhere, even in the best of times, and now you’ll have to be even more concise when laying out your business plans.

Here are some aspects to pay close attention to when you are cooking up your ideas for a new restaurant opening.

Maximize Capacity While Adhering to COVID Regulations and Concerns

For much of the first year of the pandemic, many restaurants had to operate with strict capacity limits and had to be creative with the way they dealt with the situation. Though we are starting to exit the harshest lockdowns, some elements may likely creep back in in the coming months and perhaps years.

Therefore it makes sense to plan accordingly. If you are opening a new restaurant, we’d suggest you seek to push your seating outdoors as much as is feasible and indeed legal, as these areas may become prime real estate for your customers.

Your indoor areas should remain sparse, both for the sake of likely regulations and to ease any customers’ concerns during these trying times. So with regards to your budget, try to plan well and use restaurant furniture to your advantage. Rip out any ideas of booths or kiosks and move towards small, understated indoor seating areas.

Make Your Takeout Menu a Major Pillar Of Your Business

Even prior to the pandemic, there was a real gear change when it came to takeout orders and the percentage of the revenue made by restaurants from this avenue. It’s a part of the business that will only expand so much so that ghost kitchens are cropping up all over the place, and your new restaurant will have to make this part of the service a crucial one.

Make sure your online presence and takeout menu are both well delivered (in every sense of the word) as well as enticing and cutting edge. Clearly, you’ll also need to budget accordingly, especially if that area of your sales is higher than your in-house sales. In other words, you may not need quite so many waiting staff.

This might mean offering a takeout/takeaway menu that is slightly different from what you serve in your physical location. Try to make sure it’s sustainable both from a cost and time resource perspective. If you get this right, then you can certainly help to increase the margins from a financial standpoint.

Learn How to Operate On Skeleton Staff

During the pandemic, the hospitality industry saw one in four people laid off, and that’s a theme that is likely to continue. Opening a restaurant at the tail end of 2021 or early 2022 will require you to tighten your collective belts from the outset.

Consider opening your restaurant only in key shifts and staff accordingly. You may also want to restrict your intake of customers to only reservations, and that way, you know exactly what to expect on a given day or shift.

Minimize your costs by being across every conceivable bump in the road. This may well be the mantra to use ahead of your restaurant opening plans.

Look for a Niche and Stick With It

It’s likely that customers coming to restaurants will stay at a relative low and the act of eating out looks set to, once again, be something of a luxury. Whereas previously customers were maybe eating out multiple times a week, it may now become a far less frequent event. This is particularly true of work lunches.

That means your establishment needs to have a unique selling point. It needs to offer a reason for customers to choose you over whatever other restaurants are dotted around in the near vicinity.

Now, your USP may just be amazing food, or it could be the vibe. It could, however, be more specific than that. If you are an Italian restaurant opening in a busy city promenade, you sure as hell better be the best Italian restaurant in the area. Maybe your eatery has excellent design; perhaps it’s known for its friendly service, or it could be that your restaurant is known for its ability to host kick-ass functions.

Whatever it is, you need to be the best in town.

Be Prepared to Fail, Plan to Succeed

The key to a sensible strategy when it comes to opening a new restaurant is to prepare for the worst. There’s no sense in throwing the kitchen sink at your plans; that would make what is already a risky proposition into something akin to business suicide.

Make a plan that is predicated on keeping costs down from the outset, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Consider starting small and expanding if all goes well. Some restaurants may elect to start with a pop-up of sorts or operate from a food truck perhaps, in order to gain a following an exposure, before moving to a brick and mortar opening.

There’s no sense blowing your budget on wild dreams and then crossing your fingers. Adopt a sensibly optimistic outlook and scale-up if all goes well.

Canvas the neighborhood, see what the residents feel is missing, fill the market gaps. Do everything you can BEFORE you even put together an opening menu or even staff up a project.

Be prepared to fail. Plan to succeed. That’s a motto that may serve you well.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes